I would also note that empathy has shown to be weaponizable - i.e. you can use empathy to some people to justify oppression of others and dehumanize them. My observations in American politics today is that this is largely what the political debate has devolved into - you find some cause that sufficiently many people empathize with, you dress it up, and you use that to drive your agenda. I think it's no surprise that the causes that tend to be among the most partisan (and the most reliable when it comes to turning out supporters and votes) are basically moral panics, like abortion on the right, or guns on the left.
Empathy, no. Being charitable in your appraisal of your opponent, yes. Meaning, don't assume off the bat that your opponent is malicious unless you have good reason to believe that. Also, acquaint yourself with the views of your opponent before dismissing them as stupid. Charity, not empathy, is the proper attitude. Empathy prioritizes feelings over truth and reason. This is dangerous, foolish, and wrong. Truths may be painful, and where appropriate, we should be charitable toward those in error and find the truth painful, but we should never sacrifice truth or prefer feelings over truth and reasoned arguments. We are also foolish to expect everyone competent and capable of reasoned argument. That is why we have authorities. Really, the authorities are at fault here because they have given the masses license to behave aggressively and boorishly when they should be discussing instead of peddling their latest tendentious sophistry and bullshit.
I wonder if anyone else relates to this. I feel like up until the last few years, my understanding of "empathy" was always very different than how it is often used now. Empathy was literally putting yourself in another person's shoes, understanding their emotional perspective. But the key there is that it was one person. Like, a friend, or a therapist to a client, etc. A relationship free of agenda.<p>Now I often see it as almost a corporate kind of buzzword, like with UI/UX people having "empathy" for their users (in order to understand "their" needs and make more money from them). Or people having "empathy" for populations for political reasons as a way to build political support for something. It seems more related to the language of branding and marketing now.
Art helps facilitate communication. You can communicate an entire, massive, powerful idea by just saying "1984." That's where the power lies. The thought experiment aspect is nice too but you can write any old book to push any old narrative if you think enough people will buy it. I think that's neither here nor there.<p>This analysis is uni-dimensional. There is nothing special about Democracy, per se, or even about standard political issues. We are highly political creates and you'll notice the very same patterns of calling the other side stupid or assuming they have an agenda with regards to basically anything. Though credit where credit is due, I think the subtext is saying "wait, are we in trouble?". That's not an entirely silly notion IMHO. History has shown things can progress and then go back the other way.<p>We might have left the tribes but tribalism never left us. We have upgraded ourselves a little bit, but there is a long way to go. There are many underlying problems with our cognition that paint a pretty bleak picture with regards to "can't we all just get along?", but all is not lost. Just as The Enlightenment moved people away from relying on Mysticism as a philosophy, there is an ongoing dialectic around these issues that has the chance to birth a new philosophy that can help elevate our thinking further.<p>In general just being aware of all our cognitive pitfalls, I think, will go a long way and there is also language that goes along with new ideas to help us communicate using new tools.<p>I'll list some books I've read/I'm reading on the journey to help me figure this out. Most of this paints a picture that says "we need to actively adopt a philosophy where we emphasize digging into the opponents side more, also, yes they likely are coming to faulty conclusions, but still give them the benefit of the doubt as it will strengthen your own thinking."<p>History (last 14,000 years):<p><pre><code> Why Nations Fail
The Origins of Political Order
Sapiens
Guns, Germs & Steel
</code></pre>
Psychology:<p><pre><code> Thinking Fast and Slow
The Elephant In The Brain
Predictably Irrational
</code></pre>
Poltics:<p><pre><code> The Righteous Mind
The Political Mind
Chimpanzee Politics
In Defense of Troublemakers
A General Theory of Bureaucracy
</code></pre>
Communications:<p><pre><code> Words That Work
Shortcut
Surfaces & Essences
Metaphors We Live By
On Controversy
Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision Making</code></pre>
> pre-war German and Japanese<p>In the November 1932 elections in Germany, the socialist and communists got 221 Reichstag seats to the Nazis 196. 10 of the KPD's seats gained since the July 1932 election were from the socialists - the Nazis helped radicalize German left workers. On February 20, 1933 the CEOs and board members of Germany's Fortune 500 equivalents pledged millions of Marks to the Nazi party, five months later the Vatican signed the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany.<p>Nothing like that is happening now because there is zero threat from America's working class against the system. It has been losing power with each year, and even college educated professionals have been losing power for decades, something chronicled thirty years ago in "Fear of Falling". There is also no external threat of any historical significance. Fortune 500 boards have no desire to bankroll the efforts of people like Andrew Torba (Y-combinator funded Torba, who did gab.ai, and Paul Graham talks about the genetic intelligence superiority of certain races, but this is not big capital). Trump has been talking about pulling troops home, not about more Lebensraum.
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"<p>-- Winston Churchill
If art is important to building empathy, our problems might stem from art's recent pivot to shock over beauty and virtue signaling over the cultivation of virtue.
Hah! Well let’s do an experiment. I’m going to give what I think is the point of view of your typical right winger and your typical centrist democrat, and then hopefully someone can educate me as to where I’m wrong. To be clear I’m going to go for the basic profile here. Nuance is for cowards.<p>Conservatives: I was born in 1948. When I was a young adult, everyone was ok and everything made sense. There was an order to things, everyone had a place. Our great enemy was communism; we had capitalism and were free, while our enemies were communists and lived under dictatorship. I was afraid of communism because communists almost blew up the world, plus we fought them in Vietnam. Communists are bad people and therefore their ideas are bad ideas. I suspect that all liberals are either explicitly communist or are being misled by communist appeals to emotionalism. What we need is a strong rational person who will take charge and root out the people who are getting out of place and ruining things for everyone else.<p>Centrist liberal: I was born in 1972. When I was a young adult, politics were civil and everyone was polite. I never really paid attention to politics because I thought it was boring. I like my job and I think my boss is a great guy. My favorite political figure was Martin Luther king, because he said that everyone should be nice and get along. I’m not racist, because I like Martin Luther king. I don’t understand why everyone seems so angry these days. Technology is so amazing these days, it’s just going faster and faster. I love buying new fancy things. I think that if we could just elect more democrats to congress, then everyone will be nice again and stop being so nasty to each other.<p>How’s my empathy? Am I close? I would love it if someone would give a similar treatment to the anarchist/socialist point of view, just so I can see what kinds of silly things people believe about me. Turnabout is fair play. Let me have it.
><i>Whether its American Conservatives or UK Remainers, much of the political spectrum has an inability to consider the other side's opinion</i><p>I would caution the author against merely dismissing this behavior as a defect in their thinking. I suspect that some or most of the lack of empathy is intentional.<p>Aside: In my view, most people who espouse political views merely parrot bits and pieces of arguments that they have seen elsewhere, so I ignore these "non-thinkers" as I don't believe that they contribute much to the empathy or lack thereof in today's politics.<p>Back to my point: I think that apathy is often a strategic advantage, especially in politics. The ideological leaders of the groups know this and choose to employ narratives that paint their opponents as evil monsters rather than misled humans, as it makes their jobs significantly easier.<p>For example, being the political party who sets aside the traditions of the government to, for example, fast-track the nomination of a high-value judge by changing the rules, confers a great advantage to whoever is willing to cross the line first.<p>In today's democracies the winner of an election is mainly determined by who can stir up the most support from their large preexisting base of supporters. In this system the most attention grabbing rhetoric wins, and empathy just doesn't seem to get the kind of attention that vitriol does.<p>As for dealing with apathy in politics, I am skeptical of the idea that there is much to do other than remove the advantage that apathy provides, which itself seems very difficult. Promoting empathetic arts seems noble, but I doubt that it would even slow the current trend we see playing out on social media.